RunKeeper – An Interesting iPhone app/Social Media experiment/Web App

In the world of software products, these days lots of ideas get thrown at the wall.  Most have some element that seems compelling, and really works, but the other elements don’t really capture the need of the user.

RunKeeper is an example of an idea that, by contrast, seems to fire on all cylinders.  Caveat emptor: I’m a runner off and on (I’m training for a race now, but wasn’t a month ago) and my needs may not be reflective of every runner’s.  Still, I think I’m close enough to the target.

RunKeeper allows athletes (from snowboarders to runners) map their routes, and keep their workout history.  So if you are tracking your average mile time or want to get an accurate distance for how long you’ve run, RunKeeper does it for you.  Their iPhone app is the means of tracking your activity – you start and stop activities at the right times, then upload them to runkeeper.com.  Through the site, athletes can set their profiles to post activities to their social media accounts, like Facebook, so their friends can see those activities and shame/congratulate them on their stats.

The elements that RunKeeper has really gotten right are:

1. Focus the iPhone app on the required mobile functionality.  The iPhone app is like a dashboard for your run – RunKeeper hasn’t tried to jam a bunch of useless functionality into the application.
2. Allow the iPhone, web app, or messaging to be access points for the whole experience.  You can download the iPhone app and create an account for the web app simply, and get started using the app and tracking in under 5 minutes.
3. Use Social Media with an end in mind.  Their is so much clutter in the worlds of Twitter, Facebook, et al, that just using Social Media for its own sake makes little sense anymore.  RunKeeper specifically introduces social media because they have a targeted audience (your running buddies) and a specific end in mind (introducing a competitive aspect to training, which often has to be a solo gig).
4. Start out with a free account to introduce users to your features; bank on serious users by adding pay reports, premium account levels, etc.

An interesting application for runners, and for product developers alike.